Abstract

What causes people to move within and between certain places and not within and between others? How do physical outdoor environments affect the way people act and move? Do different environments generate different body language and mimics in the bodies that inhabit them? In my pursuit for answers to these questions I studied literature and initiated and took part in dialogues in the form of workshops, all of which has resulted into this thesis.

My questions have initially arisen from reflections of my own environment and how it not only affects my mental condition, but also my actions. Drawing upon the hermeneutic term "preconception" I trust that what we label "truth" is constructed by our lived experience and the society we grow up in. Therefore I don't believe in deriving an objective and truthful knowledge about places solely from the mental processing of visual inputs. Instead of focusing on mental notions of places I have therefore chosen to study (human) bodily presence, experience and adaptation to its environment.

My analysis shows that despite vast criticism towards modernist or functionalist planning ideas within architectural discourse over the last thirty years, it still clearly lacks the notion of bodies. Since the birth of the modern city at the end of the 19th century, the experience of the city has dealt with visual, spiritual and mental notions about space. The focus on the opposition space-place during the 20th century has further evolved the mental notions without considering bodies. The result of this is that, up until this day, architectural discourse is governed by mental, transcendental notions.

Further I show how the terms space, place and landscape (as well as its corresponding terms within a constructivist and bodily approach) are equally relevant and may well represent different dimensions that ought to be taken into account in the production of space. The significance of the three dimensions is expanded through the examination of the human body in space, by means of theories derived from modern and post-modern dance. This analysis shows that bodily movement speaks directly to a bodily preconception which, similar to a mental one accumulate experiences, but where the bodily preconception mainly takes place in everyday life.

The study of the term territoriality (which explains the power or influence that environments have on bodies) further shows that different territorialisations play an important role for our actions during everyday life and that a territorial complexity is preferred if one requests environments that allow and welcome different types of actions and bodies. The contribution of choreography to urban planning is thus the understanding of the body in space and the three dimensions of bodily movement (movement, participation and presence) that should be considered in production of space. My proposal for urban planning is to explore the design of environments that are engaging bodily instead of mentally, thus creating bodily presence rather than visual form evoking mental notions.